I couldn't decide what was worse: being gutted and dissected alive by that tall doctor, or watching Mariella, Elena, Katherine, and the other wolves being raped—violently, cruelly, and with the most degrading words. Maybe the worst was this damn helplessness, the fact I could not stop them, could not save my pack, not right now anyway, but having a just watch that. They raped me too, but I was numb, and besides, Mariella and I were so skeletal that the men had to psych themselves up to rape us; they preferred curvy women.
The pain and emptiness persisted. I was sure my pheromone glands—in my neck and wrists—were gone, but I knew someone would eventually come back for me. Damon had gotten them to grow back on me the first time, and this time there were ten of salvatores. I would be lame, but it was not that bad. Still, I felt utterly powerless.
Even though I was less drugged, the repeated cycles of death, revival, dissection, and rape finally wore me down. I had no idea how long we'd been there, but our condition suggested months—three months, maybe more—incredibly long time for men to party.
After Mariella broke the monitors, the doctor didn't replace them, which made me wonder if he was cheap or simply didn't care. He was angry, a stark contrast to his earlier clinical coolness. He stomped in daily, scowling, and frequently lost his temper when his subordinates reported to him.
The Bruce Willis look-alike had stopped coming, which further enraged the doctor. He'd had to pay back money for failing to deliver me, meaning my interrogation, extensive and brutal, was often just for the sake of cruelty, almost personal. I had no idea why he targeted me; perhaps I'll find out someday.
He was on my list to be killed, too. I had now list of victims in my mind, including several freaking guards who raped us, no mercy, this time soldiers would die too, even they were just obeying orders.
This doctor was inventively cruel in his attempts to break us, and I suspected he had something to do with Sark, who remained absent. Judging by the doctor's behavior, he likely saw Sark as supernatural, due to the cloning spell. Therefore, Sark was the enemy.
I did not bother to hate the doctor; I looked at him with cool dismissal, knowing he would be dead and it would be painful, slow and I would enjoy from it very fucking much, I would show him how freaks like me does it.
This doctor, as pro-humanity as they came, was unfamiliar to me. While I'd encountered radical activists before, I couldn't place him. Perhaps he knew me only by reputation or through a mutual contact. Regardless, I knew he'd be a dead man once I was free. Killing him wouldn't require rage; it would be simple.
All that was needed was my darkness, which was out in the open, and having a blast with men, but I had no idea about that. My darkness had oozed into the hive, but I couldn't fully access or manipulate it. I could sense it, receive fragments, but efficient sending and receiving remained elusive. It was bloody hard for me not to have access to my hive, and it felt so freaking crippling, like I would have missed a limb or several, but I had a just go on, try to make it and get us out.
I sat at the bottom of my cage, lacking even a cot or mattress. My sensitive skin was covered in sores, forcing me to constantly shift position. Bran, having given me his clothes for padding, lay unconscious nearby, his stomach once again full of staples. I was doing what I could, and it felt so damn little, but at least I was doing it.
Sighing wearily, I crawled to him. One swift bite to my skeletal wrist drew my blood, which I dripped onto his wound, significantly aiding its healing. It wouldn't be fully healed, but at least he wouldn't tear himself apart upon waking, though the guards found amusement in his intestines flopping out as he stirred.
The time for dealing with them would come, driven not by rage, but by my darkness. The acetorphine's effects dulled my awareness; I hadn't noticed how much my darkness had spread throughout the hive, encompassing Mariella, Elena, Katherine, and even the wolves.
It craved the blood of our enemies, fueling our minds with ideas despite our wretched state. That oblivious, stupid, arrogant doctor saw only freaks, monsters, and those undeserving of humane treatment. Even with my dark thoughts swirling—my face blank, tired, and barely mobile—my thirst for revenge remained.
I was maybe a monster that he envisioned after all, but it was hardly my fault, and I would show him what happens when I snap, even without my rage. With my memory, I won't forget, I won't forgive either.
Katherine, across the corridor in her cage, asked, "Are you okay? Why heal Bran? He's selling us out."
I replied, "He's an idiot. We need him mobile. I sense you manipulating the hive, but I can't access or control it. The drugs have messed me up, but I'm close to snapping, and I don't need rage for that. Be ready. It will be…"
My voice was weary. Yet I tried to appear bloody strong and invincible. Like this was nothing to me.
Katherine quipped, "Bloody? Marvelous! I've waited for someone to show me a good time. You know, Damon isn't the only one who's painted the town, or a few of them red. I'm older than him, and I'm not docile. That TV series was fake; I wasn't hiding from Klaus, just having fun, as much as Salvatore allowed. He was always busy with government stuff, stopping Klaus, or stopping me, so I guess I was one reason he was away from you, too."
I grunted. "The guards find it funny to watch Bran rip his staples open and spill his guts. I wonder how they'll feel when I show them theirs?" My voice had my darkness in it, and you could hear it.
Katherine raised her eyebrows; my expression convinced her I was serious. My darkness, flooding out, masked the trauma we shared, giving us a false sense of something. Only when the darkness receded would the true trauma emerge, revealing what was left of us.
Escape failure wasn't even a question; I would get us out, eventually. However, instead of a swift escape, I intended to have some fun with my victims first—not wise, given my frail state. But, as usual, I felt fine; my multiple deaths meant nothing in this state. I wasn't dispensing wisdom, only feeding my darkness enough to escape.
Katherine said, "I swear, when we get out and recover, I'll make you teach me everything about the Hive. I can access it, but I'm clueless because I was lazy and didn't ask questions. I've tried boosting you and others with our pissed-offness; I'm not sure if it works, but at least I can do that much."
I was silent, struggling to explain the Hive without access to it. Messed up as I was, I couldn't offer much insight.
"Continue doing what you're doing. It is hard to put words, but I will show you later when this is all over and I can get access to Hive. " I finally said. "At least Mariella's raging instead of pleading for help; that's better."
Katherine pursed her lips, nodded, and realized I was no good; no big lesson was coming from me this time. I was focused on sensory details—sight, smell, touch—to get a sense of the area. Bran was often out of it, or I was, so we had little time to talk. Mostly, I remember his broken sobs as he desperately tried to keep me alive, to stop me from dying in his arms, to no avail.
I'd died so many times I'd stopped counting, but I somehow knew Bran had counted each one and experienced them, too. A lesson for him, for sure, but what he would be like afterward remained another bloody, freaking mystery.
How long an old creature like him would take time to heal or was healing something he was no longer able to do, but all of this trauma would just suck into him like some giant black hole.
I'd shut off that part of me that felt these things, or perhaps I just had to leave it alone, to prevent it from affecting me. I knew deep down it was a temporary fix; someday it would all flood back, and I'd be a mess. But I hoped by then I'd be in a better place, surrounded by people who wanted to heal and help me, not rape and abuse me.
Of course, this sadistic doctor was curious about whether humans could breed with us. He'd placed stents in our cervixes to keep them open, so that when men raped us, their semen would end up in our wombs. I hoped—though it was a faint hope—that I wouldn't suffer another miscarriage, as my body wasn't meant to breed with humans. My immune system was highly defensive, triggering a reaction whenever something ended up where it shouldn't be, like human sperm in my womb.
I had no idea what Mariella's or Elena's, or Katherine's reaction would be—would they experience the same flood of pain and green mass, or was it simply eliminated? I could see dog sperm dripping from the sore, bloody pussies of the wolves, and their scent had changed; males refused to mount them.
Men speculated about pregnancy, but sonograms told a different story: severe uterine infection and infarcted uterine vessels—a dying uterus, with infection looming.
When the doctor tried to approach them, however, both wolves nearly mauled him, only narrowly missing his jaws even with treats. His plan to subdue the wolves had utterly failed. It couldn't have worked; my darkness was in them too, a darkness that wanted to maul, kill, destroy, and hurt. It didn't care about hunger, treats, kindness, or anything except revenge—and a little more. This wasn't the time to play nice; not at all.
My darkness affected men as well, transforming the party into a brutal torture session. Although they initially recognized the wrongness of their actions, blaming strange women who became their victims, Alaric, Wulfe, Magnum, Colin, Tim, and Taylor all participated in torturing and killing these women, finding perverse satisfaction in the act.
The aftermath, however, would bring a reckoning—a confrontation with their experience about my darkness, their actions, and the unsettling yet undeniable pleasure they derived from it. This would be a true baptism by fire for all of them.
In the darkness of my cage, I sat with my legs straight out in front of me. Elena hugged her knees, curled into a tight ball for protection. Mariella, in her own cramped cage across from me, waited like a coiled snake; some function had returned, and her fangs were dangerously poisonous.
The throbbing ache in my jaws—a testament to the fangs ripped out until new ones ceased growing—made me less than a vampire. My sinuses, filled with some sort of medical foam, caused a burning, throbbing ache that sapped my strength.
Yet, I held onto determination, even as I recognized we were running on fumes, our situation worsening. Soon, it would be time to act, though I had no idea how fucking long our escape would take or how freaking mobile everyone was.
My own dark desires demanded a pound of flesh for every assault, every thrust, grunt, and brush of hairy body against mine. Every damn slap of hairy balls against my ass. Every touch, every rub of a hairy dick, every hot flood within me, every rough hand on my breasts—I wanted no sex. Not for a long time, and I knew this was true for all of us. We were broken, our pack's usual lust for pleasure supplanted by a lust for revenge and slaughter.
I stared at the blank wall ahead; my cage was in a corner, Mariella's on the other side, but the remaining wall offered no escape. While feigning unconsciousness usually worked, I'd observed the guards, noting their habits and routines. It would be paramount while planning our escape to see the best window to act.
The tall, thin guard, his knee injured by Bran, avoided our cage, but the fat, waddling guard with the beer belly was a regular visitor. His attempt to force me to perform oral sex ended with a nasty bite to his tiny, stubby, smelly dick, a bite that left him howling.
Now, he usually just groped me. Not that there was much to grope in me. I was the skeleton, more or less, and did not care for his hands on my body. I longed to slash open that sagging gut, but likely only fat would spill out, not the intestines I envisioned.
A dark smile played on my lips; my thoughts were consumed by killing, maiming, and hurting. A few days earlier, they'd subjected me to another brain scan, during which I remained awake, observing their attempts to pinpoint my pleasure centers and discover my breaking point.
The doctor stood reading the monitor when, in a dark voice, I asked, "Do you have any idea how wonderful it feels, plunging my hand into someone's gut and pulling their guts out?"
He turned, surprised to see me coherent enough to speak. Another doctor pointed at the monitor, prompting him to ask, "No, I don't, but why don't you tell me? What does it feel like to actually kill someone?"
I smiled darkly. "It feels good," I answered. "It gives you a feeling of power. Those loops are so wonderfully warm and wet, and I can see the suffering in the victim's face. The trick is not to kill him straight away—mortally wound him, but leave him to suffer."
The doctor grunted, then asked more specific questions, his eyes fixed on the monitor.
An hour later, I overheard him say to another doctor, "Incredible. She has no active centers for physical pleasure, but as she talks about killing, see these areas? They're unique to her. This pattern—her pleasure centers—she's truly a killer, a monster. I've never seen anything like this. We have to question the others as well. Is this common among them, or is she just a freak?"
"I know you worked on Sark," I said. "My number, 789610. It was Sark's original nomination for my enzymes, a long time ago."
Again, he was surprised by my alertness.
"Sark is a perfect example of the moral degradation that happens to humans when they mix with magic," he said condescendingly. "It corrupts them. I was once part of Sark's undergraduate team studying those enzymes, but they weren't that special. I can make more use of a succubus' spinal fluid than your liver enzymes. Sark isn't human; he doesn't think like a human, and he's a disgrace. The legend he could have been… but no, his greed got the best of him, and this is the result."
He shook his head. I wanted to rip his head off, toss it on the ground, and finish him, but he knocked me out soon after. I woke up in this cage, wearing a long row of stitches and staples. I could still feel them, and by God, I wanted to pluck them out, but not right now. Maybe later, if I could get some healing done. It was soon time to act—to escape, or get even.